Nobel Prize-winning novelist Han Kang inspired by Korea’s traumatic past

From her early works to the present, Han has persistently explored human violence, the resulting wounds from such violence and the tragedy of life.

Author Han Kang [AFP/YONHAP]

Novelist Han Kang, 53, became the first Korean author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.

This is the second time a Korean has won the Nobel Prize, following former President Kim Dae-jung (1924-2009), who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000.

Born in November 1970 in Gwangju, South Jeolla, as the daughter of novelist Han Seung-won, Han moved to Seoul and attended Pungmun Girls‘ High School. She then graduated from Yonsei University with a degree in Korean Literature.

She made her literary debut through poetry in 1993 when Han’s poem was selected for the winter issue of the quarterly “Literature and Society” magazine. The following year, her short story “Red Anchor” won the Seoul Shinmun Spring Literary Contest, and she began her career as a novelist. In 1995, at the age of 25, Han published her first collection of short stories, “Love of Yeosu.”

From her early works to the present, Han has persistently explored human violence, the resulting wounds from such violence and the tragedy of life. The impetus for the formation of these thematic focuses in Han’s work was the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, a student-led pro-democracy movement.

She has often told the press that the movement "changed my life" and was "a trigger for me to start asking fundamental questions about humanity."

Such themes are explored in her best-selling novel "The Vegetarian," which also won Han the International Booker Prize in 2016. The book was originally a series of stories in a 2004 local literature magazine, "Creating Writing and Criticism" (translated). The collection was published as a single book in 2007. The English-language version was translated by Deborah Smith and published under Portobello Books in 2015.

Written from the perspectives of the protagonist and her husband, her brother-in-law, and her sister, the novel tells the story of a woman who gives up eating meat to reject societal and sexual violence.

Han's latest novel, "We Do Not Part," won the Prix Medicis award in 2023, becoming the first Korean author to win the award. Prix Medicis is one of France's four most prestigious literary awards founded in 1958.

"We Do Not Part" was published under Munhakdongne in 2021. Its French edition, translated by Choi Kyung-ran and Pierre Bisiou, was released by Editions Grasset last year. The English translation is slated for release in January 2025 under Penguin Random House.

The book is about love, life, grief and loss surrounding the 1948 Jeju April 3 Uprising, told in the voices of three women.

BY LIM JEONG-WON, LEE JIAN [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]